Thanks for an interesting post, Doug. Sure I am passionate, but I am not
sure that the post to which you were replying shows that... too playful,
too teasey. I wouldn't want to be called to account for some of the things
it had written in it.

>answerable for what you do, liable to be called to account.
>I do not claim myself to be a responsible poet, but I have always
>tried to make my work answerable for what it says.
>No doubt in some circles
>this is regarded as a fault -- if so, that is part of my being answerable, in
>this case to those who prefer open-ended interpretation, which I have no
>aggression towards.

I am interested in your use of 'interpretation'. I find it hard to work out
how I can be 'answerable for what my work says' if it is open to
interpretation and therefore not stable in 'meaning'. You seem to be
claiming that your work is not open to interpretation and instead 'says
what it means' (or at least 'says something' stable enough for which it
could be held responsible). [I assume I am wrong here.] See Stanley Fish's
work on Law for example, in (QUICK PLUG) 'There is no such thing as Free
Speech (and it is a good thing too)'. Also 'Is There A Text In This Class?'
which contains the essay 'How to recognise a poem when you see one'. I
particularly like the way he makes 'the text' disappear and reappear in
'interpreting the Variorum', 'interpreting interpreting the Variorum' and
the title essay 'Is There A Text In This Class?', all of which are also
interesting on 'interpretive communities'. Another one I have just started:
'Doing What Comes Naturally'.

Jon Corellis's Placard Dilemma is the same question here: how is work read?
in what context? by whom? But some of the best political actions I have
been involved in/aware of were the Gay Liberation Front's ironic and
playful zaps - fun to do and complex upendings of expectations - which seem
to have freaked (ah! the nostalgic old terminology comes back to me) the
zapees much more thoroughly than easily categorisable Demonstrations. Maybe
Jon should have done DSH's FROG POND PLOP! on his placard. What
interpretation would have been made of that and by whom?

>"ethics" (if you use this word the whole post-modern world explodes) capable
>of facing up to a modern notion of process roughly of this kind.

Now wouldn't that be fun! You could wander around galleries and
universities shouting 'ethics' and watch the fireworks.

I suppose that 'dead' authors can't wear ethics. In a reversal of 'The
Invisible Man', such clothes refuse to give them shape.

[PR writes (reordered in rigorous Post Modern fashion)
>a course in elementary logic and the meaning of words compulsory for
>all poets, or at least all those who intend to talk about it.

If only logic and meaning held The Answer. What a comfortable world we
would live in.
No nasty messy bits. No slurpy unmeanings - no twisting interpretations,
all logical. Dictionaries are a hedge against disaster - a vain attempt to
stem the tide of chaos of utterance and interpretation.]

Doug continues:
>And, to
>start another hare, some weird influence from the future seems involved:
>that's a concentration in my own thinking right now.

influence from the future. hmmm. I'll wait for the book, Doug.

>Most of Alice's English readings have been organised by Nicholas Johnson,
>including one extremely satisfactory reading with Andrew Duncan and Aaron
>Williamson for a lot of old ladies in Plymouth. She wishes other poets had as
>much fun.

And another Johnson organised (the same tour) in Totnes with Bill Griffiths
and Dartington students: Larry Lynch, Neil Bell and Zelda Smith.
Fun. And provoking (thought).





%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%